Odyssey 7Q - reviews, examples, etc

Scott if you were buying this camera today would you still choose the Sony FS700 and the 7Q, all in the price without lens for the FS700, firmware upgrade to 4K , CD 7Q and SSD is around $12,000?

That's a hard question honestly. It really depends on what you want, and for me the high speed video is one of my favorite things and I use it very often.

If you are just going for 4k I would wait another few months and see what happens at NAB and with cameras like the gh4, bmc4k, etc.

$12,000 seems to be a really high cost to get 4k, if that's what you are going for. Now if you want high speed at 4k (120fps), then this is your only option in this price range.

I love my FS700, and I'm glad I had an option to upgrade for a few thousand dollars to make the camera better and not have to jump to another camera. But starting over, I would be considering the black magic option if I wanted the 4k right now.

BTW, 4k IS A BEAST! Each frame of 4k RAW is about 15mb. It kills my computer :-). I am using the hd video to get my in and out points, then 'blindly' exporting the sequence with the dngs.

Pretty taxing on that 386 processor, you should upgrade to something more modern. Maybe something from the 90's era.

Check Costco. I just ordered a new Dell desktop. I-7 Gen 4 processor at 3.4ghz. 24 Gb Ram, 2 gb video card, 256 SSD, wifi, 19 card reader, Blue ray / dvd read/write, USB 3 etc etc, $1299 through Costco. The same system on the Dell site is $2199.

Hah hopefully you'll upgrade that 25Mb Ram there Don....

Sorry, been reading real estate contracts, so the detail thing is apparent.....

Scott, if you get a chance to show some clear comparison between the 4K RAW and how it really compares to HD, especially, the AVCHD....? Even a still frame/detail, blown highlights, noise, etc....?

How easy is it to switch modes on that thing, say, for instance, you want to shoot in a lower bit rate, or smaller resolution.

Does it have a time lapse mode?

It looks like an okay system that Don is talking about except for that AMD Radeon card - old tech on a new card (a.k.a. a paint job http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2430258,00.asp) - however the base system is okay. I would rip that card out, sell it and replace it with a GTX (nVidia) series card. AMD simply can't build stable drivers anymore. I have had more BSOD's due to AMD video cards than ever - finally replaced the last one on my son's gaming machine (just a week ago) and went to nVidia and not one crash since. We picked up a GTX 750Ti (about $160 bucks) small format (no overheating) and he loves it. He tells me it runs "awesomely fast" now. :) - In any case - just wanted to suggest that from experience, not to put a damper on things.

Thanks for the suggestion. I was ready to build one from scratch but the basic setup at that price was too good to pass up. I'm currently running a i-7 at 3.4 mhz with 12 Gb ram but only 500 mb video card. With the ssd and added RAM and Video memory as well as USB 3 ports I hope to have a much better computer. For HD it works great, just getting too many blue screen and for 4K I'm sure it will do fine.

My computer is a hefty machine, better than the one you are listing at costco, and it is taking that long. 4k RAW is killer to edit. the Z100 footage edited like butter, this stuff is intense.